


legends and stars

by treescape



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Imperial AU, M/M, Qui-Gon is kind of basically Robin Hood, Rebellion, additional characters to be tagged as they appear
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-31
Updated: 2020-12-31
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:48:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28454859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/treescape/pseuds/treescape
Summary: Qui-Gon Jinn wasn’t a myth, or a baseless tale planted and spread by the rebels to sow confusion.He was a Jedi.Or, twenty years after the Empire’s rise to power, Imperial officer Obi-Wan Kenobi meets a rebel leader named Qui-Gon Jinn.
Relationships: Qui-Gon Jinn/Obi-Wan Kenobi
Comments: 13
Kudos: 50
Collections: Qui-Gon/Obi-Wan Discord Server Secret Santa (2020)





	legends and stars

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Chibiobiwan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chibiobiwan/gifts).



> OKAY, here we go. This is for chibiobiwan in the Qui-Gon/Obi-Wan Discord Server's Secret Santa! Chibi's prompts are always _amazing_ and this one is no exception. It's a long one that contains spoilers, so I'll only post the first bit now and the whole thing when I post the last chapter.
> 
> Prompt: The Sith rise to power before Obi-Wan is accepted into the Jedi Order and instead, he is inducted into the Imperial Academy where he excels and graduates to become one of the top officers in the empire. However, Obi-Wan quickly becomes disillusioned with the Empire as he sees what happens to those deemed expendable and when he hears about a rebel cell led by Qui-Gon Jinn he decides that he’s going to help before the Empire can crush the group for good. Staying a few steps ahead of the empire, he tracks down Jinn only to be caught instead with a lightsaber to his throat.

The stories said that Qui-Gon Jinn was ten feet tall and bore a blade of fire. On Zeffo, he’d lit up the rocky horizon at dusk, and the bluffs had trembled and sung.

No, the stories said that Qui-Gon Jinn was _twelve_ feet tall and swung a sword of death. On Saleucami, he’d moved through the swamps at the blinding of dawn, and the land had shaped to his will.

 _No_. The stories said that Qui-Gon Jinn could change his form and held hope within his hands. On Er’Kit, he’d danced through the hills and down amongst the dunes, and the sandstorms had answered his call.

Wait, the stories said…

Oh, what did it matter anyway? It wasn’t like Qui-Gon Jinn was real.

\---

Obi-Wan had always enjoyed a good puzzle, and this one intrigued him to no end. In all his twenty-one years, he’d never encountered a mystery that called to him more, a lodestar in deepest night.

The stories niggled and nagged at the back of his mind. They were everywhere, even if no one ever seemed to actually tell them, voices falling silent in the presence of Imperial officers. So once, awake in his quarters with nothing but the screen of his datapad to hold the night at bay, he tapped in a search.

_Q-u-i-G-o-n-J-i-n-n._

If he’d known it would begin a quest that would consume him whole—

Well, he would have done it anyway.

\---

This was the thing: the records were too clean. Every story had a foundation of some kind, even if it was shrouded in mist, hints that haunted the databanks if you only knew where to look. But Qui-Gon Jinn wasn’t even a ghost, as far as official records could be trusted. He appeared to persist by word of mouth alone, originating everywhere and nowhere at once.

It quickly became Obi-Wan’s primary focus when he was off duty. If he wasn’t in the officer’s mess on the _Aggressor_ or training for whatever recertification he was up for next, he was scouring the Imperial archives on his datapad. Every dead end simply drew him in further, and there were plenty of those: every record, every report, every thread he could possibly think of to follow vanished into nothing.

It could really only mean one thing, so far as Obi-Wan could figure out, because there was nothing else the Empire seemed to fear enough to bury so absolutely.

Qui-Gon Jinn wasn’t a myth, or a baseless tale planted and spread by the rebels to sow confusion.

He was a Jedi.

\---

If Obi-Wan had followed the rules, as a Lieutenant in the Imperial fleet really should, he would have left it at that. It was practically against Imperial law to even _speak_ of the Jedi since their fall in the year after Obi-Wan’s birth. Everything Obi-Wan knew, he’d learned from hushed whispers as a child, the kind shared late at night by his mother behind closed doors and trembling hands. They were hardly to be believed, if logic held any sway—tales of magic and wizardry crafted for children and voiced with regret.

But if there was one thing Obi-Wan had learned since graduating from the Imperial Academy on Coruscant five years ago, it was that the Empire didn’t even play by its _own_ alleged rules. He had seen far too often just how many lives were deemed expendable by the Empire that had sworn to protect them.

So Obi-Wan dug as deep as he could, and then even deeper still, and his instructors at the Academy always _had _said he could piece things together out of less than nothing. A few well-placed deletions here, a few missing links there—together, they began to weave a tale. And if it was a tale just as fanciful as the ones he’d heard in markets and cantinas from Alderaan to Utapau, well, maybe there was more truth in some of _those_ than he’d originally thought.__

____

\---

The stories said that Qui-Gon Jinn could be anywhere he wanted in the blink of an eye, but Obi-Wan knew he was on Tython.

That was, he was on Tython _some_ of the time; it appeared to serve as a base of operations of sorts. Obi-Wan couldn’t even begin to guess how he’d managed to avoid detection. There were no active outposts anywhere in the system, but Tython was deep within the galaxy’s core. It wasn’t the most dangerous hiding place Obi-Wan could think of, but it wasn’t that far off, either, not with Coruscant looming so close.

Obi-Wan wondered if that was why Jinn used it, and what that said about the man if it was. That he was crafty, most likely; it was a move few would expect. Obi-Wan tucked the thought away with the other odds and ends he’d gathered over the months, the things he wasn’t quite sure were fact or fiction or some singular combination of both. It sat there in the back of his thoughts, beside half-sketched accounts of a bearded giant, of a man with kind eyes, of a voice that seemed better suited to laughter than it was to sorrow.

In the end, he wasn’t sure how much of his decision came down to curiosity, and how much came down to that strange niggling in his mind, and how much came down to the regret in his mother’s voice. Perhaps at least some of it came down to dreams of a face creased with laughter and kind hearted eyes.

He supposed it didn’t matter. When Commander Riburn announced that they’d been assigned to establish a secret base on Furies Gate, a barren world at the edge of the Tython system, Obi-Wan didn’t hesitate.

\---

Tython was covered in mountains. Something about that fact stood out in his mind as Obi-Wan maneuvered his small fighter through the atmosphere; it felt a world of secrets and beauty both. It felt—

He wasn’t sure how it felt. It felt right, somehow, and he had no idea what to make of that.

It had been an easy enough matter to be assigned scouting duty. Commander Riburn liked initiative, and she _also_ liked her officers to take routine duty every now and then. From there, it would be easy enough to fake a navigational error or some other kind of malfunction to explain why he’d gone a little off course.

Of course, that was when the whole world decided to go sideways.

\---

When his fighter finally came to a full, skidding stop in a sizable clearing, just inches from the tree line, Obi-Wan breathed a sigh of relief. His satisfaction lasted only a moment. He was still alive, which was certainly a plus, but he had some _serious_ problems on his hands.

Like the fact that someone had just tried to shoot him down out of the sky, and they’d rather succeeded.

“This is just my luck,” he said aloud, hoping that the sound of a voice would settle his stomach. For a moment, he resisted the urge to let his head slump back against his pilot’s seat in a dramatic show of disgust—and then gave in and did it anyway. It wasn’t like there was anyone around to see. If he wanted to be dramatic for just a moment, he might as well go ahead.

He allowed himself only a second’s indulgence before straightening up to take fuller stock of the situation. The fuel lines were likely fine; he’d be able to smell them if they weren’t. Smoke was rising on his left, and that was of more concern. If the ship was badly damaged, there was no telling how long it would be before he could get off this planet. He’d only meant to be here long enough to deliver a warning about Riburn’s orders to expand into the system.

It looked like his tale of malfunctions and mishsaps might end up having more truth to it than he’d intended.

“First things first, Kenobi,” he told himself firmly and reached for his harness, the snap of its release loud in the silence. He pulled off his helmet, checked to make sure his blaster was secure at his hip, and then punched at the release for the hatch.

As his boots hit the ground of the clearing, dirt puffing up around the polished black, he was struck by the smell of scorched metal and lush, growing things. It was an odd, unnatural mix, somehow eerie in the sunlight arching warmly above.

Obi-Wan uncoiled from the faint crouch he’d landed in, and ominous silence rang in his ears. It was broken only by the rustling of the leaves, all other life come to a hesitant pause in the thunder of his near-crash. For the time being, he spared only a quick glance at the hull of his fighter before moving slowly and carefully towards the tree line. He’d have to check it more carefully later, but for now, he was more concerned about other things.

Such as finding the Jedi who had every reason to think him an enemy—and apparently did.

Step by careful step, Obi-Wan made his way towards the trees, ears tuned for the return of birdsong, skin registering the cant of the wind. He didn’t often spend time in forests such as this, but he’d trained to operate in heavy growth during his years at the Academy.

It was just as the light above was starting to dim from the nearness of overhanging branches that everything seemed to happen at once.

Almost before Obi-Wan could register it, there was movement to his right, and it took a moment to make out the Nautolan emerging from behind a colossal tree. The shade of his skin was only a little paler than the winding vines and rippling leaves that framed him, and he wore long robes of a nondescript brown. As Obi-Wan was trying to fully pick his shape out of the forest, two women, one Togruta and one Mirialan, materialized from the left.

Obi-Wan was so busy tracking their movements that he didn’t even notice the figure behind him until a flash of light flared at his neck, as brilliant as the sun above and as verdant as their surrounds. It should burn, he thought almost distractedly through the shock that ignited in his veins, but there was no heat on his skin, just a steady hum from that blade of fire.

That sword of death.

Did this man hold hope in his hands?

“You might find it prudent to tell us why you’ve come here and how you’ve found us,” a voice said mildly at his ear, a voice that was even and sturdy and—yes, a voice that Obi-Wan thought was meant for laughter more than it was meant for sorrow.

Somehow, Obi-Wan knew deep within his bones that he wasn’t going to have to look very far to find Qui-Gon Jinn.

Because Qui-Gon Jinn had found _him_.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! More soon 😅


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